The earliest history written in Muslim India and the only contemporary account of Qutb al-Din Aibak's campaigns. It covers the second battle of Tarain (1192), the fall of Delhi, Ajmer, Kanauj and Gwalior, and Aibak's wars of the later 1190s against the Chaulukyas of Gujarat and the Chandelas (Kalanjara, 1202 to 1203), which are the matters in train on 1 January 1200. It is court panegyric in ornate rhymed prose: it praises Aibak and his master Mu'izz al-Din, gives few hard dates, and treats Hindu rulers as nameless enemies. Used with care it is the nearest witness to Aibak's position in 1200.
About this source
- Title
- Taj al-Ma'athir
- Author
- Hasan Nizami (Sadr al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan Nizami of Nishapur)
- Author's dates
- active about 1200 to 1220
- Written
- begun about 1205 at Delhi, carried on to about 1217
- Language
- Persian, with Arabic verse
- Covers
- 1192 to 1217
- Kind
- History
Saroop's 1998 translation is in copyright and not online. Elliot and Dowson's extracts are selective and sometimes abridge the dates. The author's own name and dates are uncertain; he says he came to Delhi from Nishapur by way of Ghazna.
Where to read it
Editions
- No critical edition of the full Persian text is freely online; manuscripts and lithograph extracts only (not freely online)
Translations
- H. M. Elliot and J. Dowson, The History of India as Told by its Own Historians, vol. 2 (London, 1869), English extracts of the Taj al-Ma'athir
- Bhagwat Saroop, Taj ul Ma'athir: The Crown of Glorious Deeds (Delhi, 1998), complete English translation (not freely online)